”If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium” A 1969 romance/comedy movie starring Susanne Pleshette, Joan Collins and a plethora of stars of the time.
It’s Tuesday and we mistime our departure from Brussels slightly and ride with the rush hour drivers, walkers and bike riders. Yikes! Our route wiggles and waggles so the turns are always anxiety producing in the traffic. We make it through the city and by about 12 kms we are in quieter traffic.
Murray warned me about it being hilly today. The hardest climb is about a 10% grade for about a short block. That gets us breathing heavy! Once we leave the Brussels area, the terrain tended down down down.
With such short mileage, we arrive in Dendermonde by noon. Luckily, we get into our room earlier than the 3:00pm check in time, change clothes and head out to see the city.
Dendermonde has a university here which gives it a certain vibe. Pizza is easily available, along with burgers and beer. The grote market is small and the surrounding buildings, including the stadhuis, are well kept and in good condition. There was a parade last weekend and the parade floats are sitting in the grote market awaiting the results of the judging for best float. They are all very impressive.
St. Alexius Begijnhof, with its buildings laid out in a triangle is an oasis of quiet. This religious women’s residence has sections dated from the late 1200s, and parts that are considerably newer. There is a small church in the center of the triangular area. It would be a peaceful place to live.
The canal that runs through part of Dendermonde is used for sports. Today there is a class of upper elementary kids in kayaks, navigating up and down the canal with lots for noise and pandemonium.
I have to tell you about our evening last night.We sat down to book our hotel for tonight and thought we should also book our stay in Ghent. Holy smokes! The few hotels in Dendermonde seemed to be all booked up and Ghent doesn’t have any rooms available! What is going on? It’s midweek! We find and book the hotel we are at now, Boutique Hotel Marie Marie. Then we start playing with dates for Ghent and find one for two nights instead of the three we planned. Then we thought we should look at the next places we are going, Kortrijk and Bruges. Apparently Kortrijk has an international construction convention in town and there are NO rooms. We decide not to go there at all and reroute ourselves. Then Bruges, similar story with a lack of hotel rooms, with bike parking. We end up booking the Velohotel, 2km outside the center of Bruges. Apparently a lot of tour groups stay there, so we will be rubbing shoulders with other cyclists. There is a bus stop right there so we can get into Bruges. So, we have booked hotels for the next week, something we were trying hard not to do.
We have been on the road now for 11 days. While eating supper tonight we tried to recall where a particular restaurant was. Which city? What hotel did we stay in? It’s all starting to blur together…….